


Woodsmoke

by Quiddity



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Olberic is a slightly old man and Therion has a crush, Olberic makes it hard not to admit it, and he really doesn't want to admit it, bed sharing trope, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18482488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiddity/pseuds/Quiddity
Summary: “It’s not about age. It’s about wear and tear. Olberic has been swinging that big sword of his for most of his life. No wonder it’s stiff. But anyways. How cold it is tonight? I’m sure he’s sore. If he’s still up, make sure he gets warm.” Alfyn says.“And how, pray tell, am I supposed to do that? He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself,” Therion asks. He unfolds his poncho from the hearth in Stillsnow's inn. When the room comes back into view after pulling it over his head, he finds Alfyn’s eyes centered on his chest.Therion growls. “Now what the hell did I sit around here for all night for if I’m just going to give it up?” Alfyn only laughs.“I didn’t say anything. What you do is up to you. I’m just handing out advice. Just in case.” Therion rolls his eyes and ducks up the stairs towards the room he’s sharing with Olberic.





	Woodsmoke

**Author's Note:**

> Am I the first one to post a Olberic/Therion fic on here? With the / and not the &?
> 
> I haven't finished anything in months and at least three weeks of that was me obsessively playing through Octopath and getting myself all worked up over these two. I guess I can at least also blame Octopath for making me actually finish something again.

Ophilia’s kind, yet insistent, smile meant it was time for bed. Early to bed, early to rise and all that, so seeing her up and trying to gently wrangle the book out of Cyrus’s dozing hands at this time of night was probably the last gentle warning they would get. H’aanit would come next. And H’aanit had no qualms about physically sending them to sleep.

  
And fine, Therion had to admit he’d been putting it off. Weariness clung like dust around his eyes, seeped into his muscles and bones along with the low, steady heat coming off the smoldering fireplace. The innkeeper had retreated to bed as well and so with no more ale, he was doing little else than watching Cyrus and Alfyn read each other’s medical journals and hiding from Stillsnow’s cold anyways. He pushes back from the table and his well loved ale glass. He gives an awkward little nod to Ophilia’s grateful look. He makes his way around a small stack of books in the floor towards the fireplace and no sooner has he taken up his folded poncho from the hot bricks than Alfyn whips up from his book and pins Therion with a red eyed, exhausted stare.

  
“Since you’re bedding with Olberic again,” (something in Therion’s mind balks at the word ‘bedding’ but he chooses to keep it to himself) “if he’s sore, tell him to try and keep warm. It’s best for cold nights like this when you’ve got stiff joints.” Where had that come from? Last Therion knew he and Cyrus had been reading up on some kind of cold weather… sickness… stuff. Something that wasn’t specifically how he was apparently to tend to Olberic.

  
“He’s got arthritis in his shoulder, you mean?” Cyrus muses without looking up from his book. Until Ophilia gently pulls it from his hand and closes it neatly, after placing slip of scratch paper to mark his place. Cyrus glances up, jolts, and it’s clear he’s only just now realized Ophilia was even there. Therion chuffs.

  
“You think so? He’s not _that_ old, is he?” Therion asks.

  
“Hell, I’m willing to set aside a nice stack of leaves on you getting it in your knees before you’re thirty,” Alfyn laughs. He closes his own books before Ophilia can move on to him too. He pulls his satchel into his lap to store them away. “It’s not about age. It’s about wear and tear. Olberic has been swinging that big sword of his for most of his life. No wonder it’s stiff. But anyways. How cold it is tonight? I’m sure he’s sore. If he’s still up, make sure he gets warm.”

  
“And how, pray tell, am I supposed to do that? He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself,” Therion asks. He unfolds his poncho, and when the room comes back into view after pulling it over his head he finds Alfyn’s eyes centered on his chest. Therion growls. “Now what the hell did I sit around here for all night for if I’m just going to give it up?” Alfyn only laughs.

  
“I didn’t say anything. What you do is up to you. I’m just handing out advice. Just in case.” Therion rolls his eyes and ducks up the stairs towards the room he’s sharing with Olberic.

 

The knight is awake, sitting on the edge of his bed and kneading at the joint of his right shoulder with a strength that shows the tendons in the back of his hand. Therion glaces at his shoulder, his broad hand, and then their eyes meet and Therion abruptly turns away, stopping only long enough to toe off his boots before he shuffles into the spare bed. And of course, that stubborn man would take the colder bed beneath the window and leave the warmer one against the inside wall for him.

  
“Alfyn said you’d probably be up,” Therion says. Pulling the blanket over himself insulates the warmth in his poncho against his skin and he sinks into it, the contrast of the warm poncho and cool room making his drowsiness all the richer. He feels Olberic watching him, his eyes going soft and warm, but he’s only distantly bothered by it in a part of his mind that isn’t fully awake. He’s given him looks like this before. During the day, after bouts of danger or when Therion pulls through for the group, and it’s always sent something squirming deep in his belly. It was a look that Cordelia gave him sometimes. A look that he never got from Darius and never thought he’d get from anybody after him. Therion rouses enough to be embarrassed and turns his face into his pillow. “How long have you been awake?”

  
He listens to Olberic’s deep, pained breath and when he glances out of the corner of his eye the knight is kneading at his shoulder again. His tunic is bunched up and wrinkled. He’s been at it for awhile now. Eventually Olberic gives up the wood frame of his bed creaks softly as he stretches out on it, stiffly pulling the blankets up to his neck. He gives a deep sigh and goosebumps wave over Therion’s skin at the hint of growl rumbling in Olberic’s massive chest.

“To be honest, I don’t think I ever got to sleep.”

  
What the hell was he thinking? Alfyn was right. The guy was in obvious pain and he had the best solution hoarded around his frame. Therion physically wrestles with himself inside his mind, drawing himself out of sleep enough to push up onto his knees. The cold snaps at his skin when the sheets pool around his hips, lashes as he whips the heated poncho off himself and flings it into Olberic’s bed. It lands across his face.

  
“Oh! It’s warm.” Olberic chuckles. He pulls it off of his face and Therion watches, with a brisk little spike of horror as he curls back up in his blankets, as Olberic presses it to his nose. “Smells good too. Smokey. You had this on the hearth downstairs, didn’t you?”

  
Olberic pulls the poncho under his blanket and rests it over his aching shoulder with a happy sound. “Yeah,” Therion says. He’s already regretting giving the poncho up. The blanket helps, but after the loss of warmth he’s all too aware of the chill stealing in through the blankets and licking at his skin. His toes are cold so he brings them up. His fingers too, so he curls them in his pillowcase and tucks them against his neck before he loses too much heat.

  
“You didn’t have to,” Olberic says. Therion glances over, his weariness frustratingly retreating with the hard edge of cold and sees Olberic starting to relax, his own appraoching sleep marking clear around his eyes and across his brow. “I feel a bit bad taking this from you.”

  
“You need to sleep,” Therion answers briskly. He turns his back on him, pushing closer to the wall.

  
“Well you do too,” Olberic says. The bed creaks again as he shifts. Therion shivers. “You look cold now.”

  
“I _am_ ,” Therion admits, shoving his other hand beneath his ribs to insulate it against the mattress. Holy hell Stillsnow was cold in autumn. “It’s fucking snowing outside, of course I’m cold. You’re cold too. That’s the entire problem.” Instead of meeting the edge in Therion’s response with his own, Olberic only chuckles again. Therion glances over, intent on apologizing for snapping, but finds Olberic holding his blanket up, offering the empty space at his side. Therion’s eyes go wide, his heart stutter-stepping beneath his ribs. He eyes the space jealously and he knows, deep down, that there would be more indulgence in taking up that offer than just the sharing of warmth.

  
“Would you like to come over here with me?” Olberic asks.

  
“Would I like to what?” Therion schools his expression into something flat, looks out the window at the fat snowflakes skittering against the glass because he knows he can’t fully hide that glitter of hope he knows is in his eyes.

  
“We’ll both be warmer,” Olberic asks, sweetening the deal with logic that can’t be rebuffed. But… No, he couldn’t and let himself live it down. Therion worked alone, lived alone, slept alone.

  
“Uh, no thanks,” he says. He turns back, tucking his nose beneath his blankets. It’s quiet for a couple of minutes, the only sounds their breathing and the gusting wind outside. Therion thinks that’s the end of it. For how big and fearsome he was, Olberic never had been one to push over little ideas.

  
So it’s surprising when Olberic stands and crosses the narrow space between their beds in a single step. His shadow eclipses the dim moonlight on the far wall but Therion doesn’t bristle. He should, and he thinks wildly, in the span of a second, that he should. That it goes against all his instincts as a thief and someone who prided himself on needing no one for so many years that his heart leaps in _excitement_ of all fucking things, when Olberic unfolds his poncho (so much of the warmth lost over the last few minutes) first and lays it over Therion’s shoulders, and then balloons his blanket over the bed and starts to climb in beside him. It’s more forcing himself to move that he jerks when the straw mattress rustles and shifts under Olberic’s added weight, looking over his right shoulder to find the knight’s face set into an expression of resolute gentleness.  
“What are you doing?” Therion whispers. Olberic butts up against his back, broad and warm. Smelling of leather polish and woodsmoke and the strong sage soap the inn had downstairs in the washroom and Gods has he really thought about this, about him, _this_ much?

  
“You left me no choice,” Olberic says simply. And that’s the end of it. He tries to rest his arm between them, finds it uncomfortable and then, like he thinks this, of all things, will be what makes Therion press him off, settles it around Therion’s waist. Therion sighs like he’s suffering. But he has to be honest with himself. He’s testing the pleasant weight of Olberic’s muscled arm against his ribs.

  
“Whatever,” Therion says. He might push back a little, just an inch, to fit himself nicely into the plane of Olberic’s chest. If the knight notices, he tactfully doesn’t say anything. “Only because I’m freezing.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm new to Octopath but I've been writing fics for a looong time. You can find me [@Quiddid](https://twitter.com/Quiddid) on twitter.


End file.
